


Love is like Sailing by Moonlight

by ThirthFloor



Series: Drabbles from the Fates List [3]
Category: Hades (Video Game 2018)
Genre: Boats and Ships, Charon and His Boat, Falling In Love, First Kiss, Fluff, Hermes is lovesick and doesn't know it, Inspired by Poetry, Love Confessions, Love at First Sight, Loving through the ages, M/M, No Beta we die like Zagreus (again), Pining, Pining Hermes, Slow Burn, Slow Romance, True Love, honestly there's not many tags for this, implied - Freeform, the river styx - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-16
Updated: 2021-01-16
Packaged: 2021-03-13 23:20:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28786359
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThirthFloor/pseuds/ThirthFloor
Summary: How does one describe the face of the universe?Hermes saw the face of the universe and gasped in its wake. He drifted up to press warm lips to solid bone, that bone so familiar. For nothing had been different, and he kissed now to inhale dark fumes that tasted of promise and peace and a love most genuine.
Relationships: Charon/Hermes (Hades Video Game)
Series: Drabbles from the Fates List [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2077338
Comments: 6
Kudos: 56





	Love is like Sailing by Moonlight

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by "No One But You" by Erutan! I definitely recommend giving that song a listen after you read! It shaped this whole fic.

How does one describe the face of the universe?

It is a magnificent thing. When one gazes up to the stars at night, to the billions on billions, the universe itself stretches further than can be counted and so out of reach that it defies the mind’s ability to comprehend its truth. The universe is vast, an expanse held so exactly in a balance of reality and fiction, of beauty and terror, that one could lose themselves in it as time abandons their soul for a lonesome wanderer.

But the recognition goes fast. The universe is something that awes the young once in a while – when their changing, growing, learning consciousness takes in any and all that it can, yet finds a moment of repose. A crane of the head backwards on a hike home, sheep over the shoulder on the rocky cliffsides of the Mediterranean with the waves crashing a constant pulse far below. The changing mind takes a moment to regard this impossibility, the expanse of the face of the universe before them, and ponders. This admiration is fleeting, dismissed to younger years and bigger dreams.

As the age passes for a mortal being, they turn their gazes down from the heavens and towards their feet, walking sandalled on dusty, cracked ground in a march towards the sea. As age passes for a mortal being they begin to ignore the face of the universe, becoming busy with their momentary life even when the complexity should prove evermore a reason to look to the stars for comfort.

Instead, there is less time. Mortal life is demanding, little peace worming its way back to the mind of the surviving being of the surface. There is less time to ponder, and less quiet amidst the busy in which to do so.

And perhaps the busiest, the swiftest of all beings had only seen the face of the universe a handful of times in his immortal life.

~

In the beginning, Hermes guided the mortal souls passed on to the grandest longboat awaiting them on the River Styx, and would be swathed in the light of the boatman’s true face. The face of the universe, so vast and endless, it was no wonder the veils of the living and dead parted for this being and that curtain be conducted by his whims. Hermes would see this light, and he would smile; first at his associate, then at the trembling mortal shades beside him.

Hermes had grown accustomed to telling white lies, whispered nothings to calm those poor shades’ nerves – _Your life was beautiful. They will remember you well. You died with honor. You were not alone. None of that matters now, something else lies ahead. I know, I know… I understand._ Sweet melodies to soothe their whimpers, their bemoaning, their fighting against the pull of his crook towards the great beyond. A divine messenger, some who wished to shoot.

But, it was no lie when Hermes would tell them of their journey’s simplicity. Its ease and comfort. The mortal souls too would see the face of the Stygian boatman, and fall for that sight of the universe they abandoned to the philosophical longing of their time on earth. They fell for its reverence, its celestial promise, and be overcome with such insurmountable peace as they boarded the dark-wooded longboat that it was a wonder why they ever feared the dying realm.

Hermes would chat briefly with his associate while the mortal souls fell deeper and deeper in awe, in that somnolent calm while awaiting their time to really go. And the Olympian messenger would deliver his briefest goodbyes, _until next time, then!_ and be on his way. He worried not for the innocent souls he shepherded to the elegant, narrow hull for their final voyage.

Wherever those poor souls were bound to end up, the trip with the strange angel, the big boatman with the face of the universe, would be their dying peace.

~

Once again though, as things go on, appear and fade and rise and fall, with time not quite definite, Hermes returned at once to find Charon’s wide brimmed hat lying low over his brow. A shroud of cooling shadow, like the inviting space beneath a tree on a hot summer’s day, hid the boatman’s forehead, his eyes, nearly half his entire face for that matter. When previously the hat had been propped back, now it covered and masked.

The light of the universe shone dimmer, only in one deeply fascinating eye and the trickles of smoke that seeped from bony jaw.

Hermes brought his spirits, but no longer found himself and party to be greeted with the light of suns farther than even Olympus stretched, grander than Apollo and more beautiful than Aphrodite in all her iterations. The colors of the night had become deeper, hushed – where once Hermes had promised his frightened souls of a meditative state of wonder, inviting like sleep and a time when one could gaze upon the heavens and wonder _what, why, how?_ without a moment’s interruption, the passing spirits of mortals gone were met with something like the feared thing that humans made the night out to be.

Hermes regarded it now, a secondhand darkness passed down through the boatman’s mother and a filter that echoed that more of his brothers – the inevitability of death that caused the human desire to look away, and the clawing pulls of sleep when there was so much, so much, so much more to do…

The messenger tried not to look away. He delivered his souls and they cowered now, they fought and once again shot at him. But Hermes was quick, and he ushered them on to the boat with just time to spare for a talk to his reminiscently gentle friend.

~

The hat remained as trips went on, the number lost count and no measure of time to a god to account for. Hermes did not mind. The boatman was still his associate, his Charon, after all. He simply wondered, with a disconcerted flutter of fiery golden wings, what had happened.

He offered little more than a brief, polite comment on the hat’s placement within some deliveries. Other times, he had spoken for better things in what rushed seconds they had. Those conversations were the more pertinent anyways, for that boatman was still Charon and no silly hat would change centuries beforehand.

~

Duly, deliveries came and went faster. The boat moved with a greater speed, a lightness in its bow that allowed the silent glide of the waters to swiften. When once shades would linger, taking in the beauty of the carvings and the craftsmanship of the dark, unknown and unsourced wood before meandering towards their fates, now they hurried off with hushed tones and frightened eyes.

Hermes continued to whisper those sweet nothings, shallow promises of which they were none the wiser. He would vow safe travels, an enjoyable ride, encouraging this final chance to reflect in the scarlet, murky, glistening waters of the Styx. He could lie or admit freely of what beauties had been in their existence, and offer a gentle nudge in the direction of this contemplation as well.

But the mortal souls would gaze upon the big boatman with the damned skull for a face, at the beckoning darkness in his eye and in his smoke, and the humans would fold their hands and turn back towards Hermes’ sunshine. Hermes refused, adamantly but politely, and moved them along.

He understood fully then how they missed the face of the universe. He missed something of it, too. Hermes moved them along, a new pain blooming in his chest like the thorniest rose, ready to prick should he prod or twist too much in one direction – he felt their reluctance, their worry, and furthermost their rejection of his dearest companion. It pricked and scratched, and Hermes felt sorry for the absence of the face of the universe.

But really, it should have been no matter. It was quite alright, for Charon was gentle. Those stars shone within, and Hermes stopped and listened long enough to tell. A smile graced his features with every scratching groan of the boatman’s voice, echoing elegant articulations, even simple phrases of greeting in his mind.

~

Eventually then, it came to develop to a different shape. Hermes did not know when the realization came to place – whether it had been told to him by a sibling, a cousin, a passing wanderer or liar, or came to him in a dream, or was merely pieced together by the winding threads of fate to form a conclusion in his mind. Despite the mystery of its origin, of the root of the bloom, during a strange second while gazing down at the earth when he broke through the clouded base of Olympus, Hermes had a profound realization that seemed so dumbfounding before.

The source of the pain, the scratch, the sting when he would deliver the souls. He found the root of that thorny blossom, the one that pricked and scratched and longed for water but could have none or drown… Hermes found a definition, an answer to centuries of a feeling lingering just beneath the surface of his divine skin.

How could one _not_ fall in love with the face of the universe? For all those who had see it, all this time, had been enamored with the safety of passing, the comfort and the quiet they wished not to abandon a moment. When staring into the face of the universe, one recognizes their meaning in all the world’s ways, in the grandest schemes of histories and the shortened lines of myths and legends. Once realizes they are all finite, they are small, and that they are just content to be that way in life and now in death.

Hermes had no death awaiting him, not by the constraints of time promised to condemn those who worshipped his godliness… but he felt small. A profound love for the universe and all it may provide, all the wonder encapsulated in just a heartened glance. It was astounding.

Hermes then considered, though, if he had fallen under the same such spell as the human souls had. And after much thought, much deliberation over miles of running like the wind through high mountains and low plains, he decided upon reaching the Stygian vessel and its guide, the being with the face of the universe.

He did not want to know if the spell ensnared him. He did not need to see the face of the universe once again. He simply wished to stay at his associate’s side, in this harmonious process of give and take and the cycle of passing to the other side.

~

Per solution, for centuries, Hermes hovered just above the brim of Charon’s hat. The wings of his ankles fluttered restlessly and batted at the flopped, the layered fabric sometimes curling with their anxious force. Hermes talked, but he talked faster and of more superfluous things – of any and all, to fill that then contemplative silence often found when gazing to the heavens beside or around one another.

A fear lingered suspiciously, deep in the roots of Hermes’ Olympian veins: if he were to catch a glimpse of that face, of the stars and the stretches of time itself and all that in between, then the decision would be made for sure. The truth be sealed, the prophecy fulfilled. Hermes would know that he had been lured like a fish on an endless line, in a river of many fish on much shorter lines, those to be clipped off after brief chase.

If Hermes gazed upon the face of the universe again, he feared knowing of the spell. He feared knowing if his love was not his own.

~

He brought gifts to pass the time. The spoiling, the spending, the selection and the gifting was more to indulge himself than his associate, to find a deep-seated glee and bone-aching satisfaction in having done so without warrant or attachment. To have a taste of spoiling that splendor and feeling as if that right to shower, to _lavish_ with affection lay right in his hands. Designed.

Charon reciprocated, evidently perceiving naught more but a business transaction of more personal sorts, and gifted his Olympian messenger with simple things of the Underworld’s tasteful lands. Even minute, the gifts felt like relics to outlast empires, held with all gratitude in Hermes’ small hands.

~

At last, with all living things that find a way to coexist between heaven and below, an insurmountable pressure came to be too much. Hermes, with the silver tongue, the sharp tongue, the quick wit and even quicker lies, suddenly burst a truth millennia old that still felt too young to be uttered to open air. He longed to describe it. He yearned to illustrate with the same praises of poets of centuries, philosophers and writers and all kinds, if only to shed words to the longing mystery that all was the fate of the universe; and a deep, inexplicable love for its possessor.

“I love you,” the truth that was blurted. Hermes said it in a quiet corridor _so_ close to the surface, _so_ close to time away in the free air. Close to heaven where he could run and fly and _breathe_.

But air thinned out the higher one went. And as high as Hermes fled, higher than Olympus, even, there was never a time he was closer to the heavens than he felt in the faded light of the hidden universe.

Charon did not respond. Only clutched his oar and ducked his head down.

“And it isn’t your face,” continuing, tongue loose from a fate unravelling, “I’ve taken centuries to depict it, Charon, my dearest companion. I’ve written phrase after phrase and poem after poem, songs and charts and even tried the molting and molding of patron gold to try and scribe whatever this is – this _hold_ you have over me. And every time, _every_ time, my dear associate, I only come up describing you as _I_ know you, as you always are. I describe a fresh memory, one from as recent as the day prior, one that I cherish. It’s something close that gives me my meaning, my connection to this place and my existence here in life.”

Charon glanced up, one deep violet eye giving a suggestion of what stirred and waned in the depths of the universe. Siren calls from distant planets, nothing concrete to grasp. A whisper. A groan.

Heat flushed Hermes’ cheeks, down his neck, down to the chest that lie half-exposed through the loose chiton. He swallowed thickly, the quick words still spilling out past the struggle in his throat – this choke, this writer’s block. This inescapable, indescribable love. “And that’s what it’s all about, isn’t it? Tell me, is the face of the universe simply the broader term I have assigned this whole time – this whole time, what I’ve used to describe what we cherish?”

After a beat. Maybe two. After what could have been seconds, minutes, months or years, Charon nodded. He leaned closer as Hermes fluttered down, breath hitching and drawn nearer to that whisper of a purple gaze. That pocket of universe.

With the drag of time, seconds after seconds and a billowing shadow, Charon removed his hat, pale beneath but shining. For the first time in centuries, that shadow lifted from a burdened brow.

Hermes saw the face of the universe and gasped in its wake. He drifted up to press warm lips to solid bone, that bone so familiar. For nothing had been different, and he kissed now to inhale dark fumes that tasted of promise and peace and a love most genuine.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading!! Leave a comment if you enjoyed - I respond to each and every one!
> 
> Follow me on social media! Twitter @thirthfloor, Tumblr @ziggyzagreus or my main blog @aegir-emblem !!
> 
> I have a music audition tomorrow, I should get to sleep!! Thanks again for reading!!!


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